Outdoors: Not enough conservation in philosophy of conservatives

Tuesday

Nov 6, 2012 at 6:00 AM

Mark Blazis Outdoors

Traditions die hard. We’re voting on a Tuesday because many of our horse-and-buggy predecessors would have had to ride long distances on the Sabbath to arrive in time for Monday voting. Voting on Wednesday wouldn’t have been good for business because that was our traditional market day. So we’re voting on Tuesday, the earliest day of the week that most voters found suitable. Religion and business have always impacted our elections.

Today we choose. Neither party presents a perfect choice for sportsmen, though our ranks will largely vote Republican because Democrats, despite leading stellar environmental efforts and wild-land acquisitions, have proven inept at convincing us that they won’t at some point try to take away gun rights. It didn’t happen during the last administration — though we were told it would — and it isn’t likely to happen in the next one. The time and numbers just aren’t right to do that.

But down the line, it’s still possible, many fear, that an antigun justice could be appointed to the Supreme Court and hurt us. That’s why so many continue to belong to the National Rifle Association, despite its warts, moles and growing nose. It’s the only organization powerful enough to counteract extreme left-leaning, antigun forces. On the other hand, conservatives are deceptively dealing us only half a hand.

A conservative victory would be a double-edged sword — on the one side, obviously helping sportsmen, and on the other, eroding the very foundations of our tradition. We’re justifiably seduced by their staunch support for gun rights and their promise to open more public land to hunting. Their support, though, comes with a catch — one many are willing to accept.

Though the vast majority of my closest hunting friends readily demonstrate their outrage at any extreme left-wing threats to our gun rights, they — for the most part — show little fear of extreme right-wing politicians who openly promise to weaken our environmental protections and to privatize and develop our public lands. They also promise to make massive funding cuts to many federal programs, including those valuable to sportsmen, like the Conservation Reserve Program.

Conservatives — the label today is an environmental misnomer, though they try to convince us otherwise — have strayed far from the progressive Republican Party model of conservation-minded, hunter-naturalist and visionary Teddy Roosevelt, who added wild lands and national parks to our public heritage.

In a state like Massachusetts, which loses access to hunting land almost daily because of development and postings, you’d think sportsmen would fight indignantly against any forces that would further diminish our public wild land legacy.

Roosevelt, unlike most present-day conservatives, believed “conservation is a national duty.” He deservedly became known as our country’s first conservation president. He put under federal protection more public land, national parks and preserves than all previous presidents combined. Roosevelt created five national parks, 18 national monuments, 51 bird reserves, four game preserves and 150 national forests. Some 23 million acres of land are protected for Americans because of him. Many wish he had been able to protect and preserve more moderate Republicans, too.

Conservatives may support seductively our essential gun rights, but they have evolved into a Jekyll and Hyde for sportsmen — willing and even eager for the sake of business to sacrifice the environment upon which our outdoor traditions depend. General hunter apathy is most perplexing because hunters historically have been America’s most significant conservationists. It has been their financial support through hunting license purchases that is responsible for most of the conservation lands, state wildlife agencies, research and protection that we have today.

Hunters deserve appropriate public lands to be open to us for our tradition. Certain public lands warrant use for our country’s economic benefit, too — but not all public lands and not without scientific and ethical justification and good stewardship.

While it’s true that periodic clear cutting of forests can result in healthy populations of grouse, deer and moose, we’ve witnessed, to our regret, that unadvised cutting can cause slope erosion and ruin trout streams. Overgrazing of open range by cattle can mean erosion, habitat destruction, the loss of sage grouse and soil health.

Strip-mining coal and fracking gas can’t be done without an environmental cost either. Every piece of our treasured legacy needs scientific, case-by-case management, not political management. Being good stewards of the land means sound environmental protection standards. Today’s conservatives who claim to be good stewards contradict themselves when they plan to gut the very programs we have in place for that purpose.

Woburn’s Steve Hurley synthesizes the concerns of several worried readers who have emailed me recently, cautioning that Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney propose to sell off millions of acres of our wild public land, drastically altering and reducing the character and quality of the outdoor legacy we leave for our children.

Every recent Republican presidential victory, Hurley observes, has been followed by diminished funding and a neglectful decline of our national parks, refuges and wildlife agencies, resulting in a lowering of morale by minimally supported and often undermined and discouraged federal land, wildlife and environmental protectors.

Hurley further objects that conservative Republicans, nationally and locally, consistently and aggressively oppose measures vital to our outdoor life like the Clean Air, Clean Water and Endangered Species acts, claiming that protective regulations harm business. A handful of Massachusetts Republicans just tried this year to weaken our state endangered-species act.

But in one of the proudest moments in my life as a Massachusetts sportsman, I saw our sportsmen’s clubs unanimously stand up against that attempt, joining environmental groups in a cooperative effort that stopped further action. If only moderation and cooperation among sportsmen and naturalists could regularly prevail to protect all of America.

We don’t want to return to the unregulated times when dumping raw sewage into rivers and lakes was an expedient, good-for-business practice. Lamentably, there is not enough conservation in conservative philosophy. In the long run, failing to support those protections, we risk a final cost greater than we can afford.

The investment in clean air, clean water and endangered American species is one of the wisest we can make for our country’s outdoor future. We need both parties to realize that real conservation — not the old model of environmental abuse for profit — is good for America.

Sportsmen should fight for the environment with the same fervor we fight for our guns. America deserves a president who will do the same.